Over the summer, as Huddersfield Town prepared for life in the Premier League , I moved from a house in Birkby to a bungalow in Emley , so both myself and the club are currently getting used to new surroundings.
But whereas I’ve struggled with a leaking tap and a lack of Internet, David Wagner 's side have adapted to their new surroundings with an ease bordering on aplomb.
This adaptation has been particularly satisfying, I’d argue, because the majority of the current team were here a year ago. Of those ‘old-timers’, Christopher Schindler , Aaron Mooy , Chris Lowe and Philip Billing have particularly shone this time and prove The Manager We All Trust has always known what he was doing.
And he’s used the promotion cash windfall wisely, polishing and balancing the squad.
We now have a goalie ever bit as good at shot-stopping as Danny Ward but he can also use his feet and come for crosses in Danish stopper Jonas Lossl .
We also have a second calm and pacy centre back in Mathias Zanka while we also now have not one, but two proper centre forwards in Steve Mounié and Laurent Depoitre .
And if Abdelhamid Sabiri can be as good at this level as he looks in the videos on YouTube , we have enriched our midfield creativity.
For me, the crucial change is the one up front. How many times last year did we get into promising crossing positions and seem unwilling to just sling the ball across because we had no one who could head it?
Now, we can mix short and long. Now, we don’t have to score perfect goals or walk the ball in.
Everyone’s predicting how Town will do so let me have my tuppence worth - I believe we will compete with every team except the top seven (the big six plus Everton ).
And I believe we’ll survive comfortably.
To do that, we’ll need to rotate well and hope our luck continues. (What luck? Like last year, when we played Newcastle United and Aston Villa before they’d found their feet in the SkyBet Championship , this time we’ve already played Crystal Palace and Newcastle at arguably lowest points of their seasons.)
More than that, I have a sneaky feeling we’ll actually thrive but it all depends on our away form.
At home, with the fantastic crowd driving the team on, we’ll be formidable (although we’ll need to pace ourselves better; against Southampton , many players had little left in the last ten minutes and a better team would have picked us off).
Away? We’ll see. We could, just maybe, over the next couple of years - because the rich get richer in football nowadays - plant some deep, deep roots in the soil of this beautiful, exciting and glorious promised land we have unexpectedly found ourselves in.
Bill has supported Huddersfield Town since August 1970, travelling up and down the country and visiting around 50 away grounds in the process. Having retired from his job with Pennine Housing in Halifax two years ago at the age of 56, the lifelong Town supporter is currently pursuing his dream of becoming a published author.
